It’s pretty easy to make, and you’ll likely have most of the ingredients on hand, except molasses if you’re me, so I’d highly recommend it for a tasty seasonal dessert. My one warning is that while there’s little active time involved in making this, it will take an hour or so to bake, so plan ahead!

GINGERBREAD – Serves 9

1/2 cup white sugar

1/2 cup unsalted butter

1 egg

1 cup molasses

2.5 cups AP flour

1 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp ground cloves

1/2 tsp salt

1.5 tsp baking soda

1 cup hot water

Preheat your oven to 350ºF, and grease and flour a 9″ square pan. (I only had an 8″ pan, so I knew I’d be baking it a bit longer.)

Then, in your mixer, cream together your sugar and butter. When that’s whipped, add in your egg and beat to incorporate. Then add in the molasses and mix well.

Next step is adding in your dry ingredients. Stir them in until they’re mostly incorporated, because the final step is adding the hot water and stirring until everything is evenly distributed. The batter will go from being thick like a cookie batter to being significantly more liquidy. That means you’re doing it right 🙂

Pour the batter into your prepared baking pan and pop it into the oven for an hour or until a toothpick comes out clean. In the 8″ dish, I baked for an hour at 350, then dropped the temp to 325 for another 15 minutes. Make sure to let it cool on a rack before serving.

You can cut these into 9 even squares, or cut it in half and slice each into 6-8 “bread” slices. Since I had nothing to compare it to, I was a bit worried that this would be over-baked and dry but it absolutely wasn’t! The top puffed up and cracked remarkably, but it was perfectly cooked. My dinner companions really enjoyed it, and I (as stuffed as I was from dinner) still managed to enjoy a slice.

You can’t go wrong with a whipped cream topping on this, but frankly it doesn’t need anything else. It wasn’t a bad foray into the world of gingerbread! Hope you enjoy it, and your holidays!